8×8 Tiny House Design by Anthony

To keep things simple, the house would be 8 feet by 8 feet. Having lived in Michigan most of my life and hoping to someday moved back by finding a patch of land and building an off the grid shack starts to complicate things.

Michigan winters are long and COLD, so the walls of this house would be 6 inches thick instead of the regular 4. This not only helps with the temperature, but also the weight of snow that would build up on the mostly flat roof.

For this house, I would start with a insulated cement slab elevated 3 inches off the ground level. Then I would build an 11 foot south wall, 10’6″ north wall, angled east and west walls, and a 9 inch thick roof consisting of 2×8’s, plywood, and rubber pond liner.

The entire structure would be insulated with spray foam and interior walls would be Kydex. Also, due to the amount of snowfall in Michigan, the door has to swing inward, and the floor in front of the door has to be somewhere you aren’t going to step later if you don’t want wet socks.

To solve this problem and instead of wasting nine square feet like most people would with a three foot wide door and not using the space in front of it, I chose a two foot wide custom made door that opens into the bathroom.

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After you enter and take off your shoes, there would be a HDPE grate that would sit on top of the rug to provide a place to stand without getting wet feet. As you stand on the bathroom grate/entry rug, to your left would be a standard 32″x32″ shower and to the right would be the innovation!

What innovation? Starting at the ground you would have a sawdust toilet in between open floorspace for shoes or boots. On the front wall beside where you would sit would be storage for sawdust and toilet paper. Three feet up would be a sink similar to those found on a submarine I toured. This version would be 2 feet deep by 24″ wide and 4 inches deep.

The actual sink basin would be a one foot circle in the middle so that there would be space on both sides to set your hair clippers or toothbrush. The way it works is when the sink gets full of water, or when you want to use the toilet, you tilt the sink back to the wall to empty it and latch it in place. On the front wall above the storage would be an electric on-demand hot water heater.

On the wall above the sink would be a 2 foot tall mirror that the sink/counter would cover when it’s in the up position. Above that mirror would be a medicine cabinet that would also have mirrors as the doors.

Another bonus of having the bathroom the entryway is that you can leave the bathroom door closed when you open the house door and you are only losing less than 132 cubic feet of hot air while the other 400 or so cubic feet are sealed off. This means more efficiency.

The bathroom would have a 6’4″ ceiling just like the most used part of my houseboat. Above the bathroom would be a single bed with 6″ spare room at the head and 3″ at the foot of the bed. The room at the head of the bed would be perfect for a cellphone and/or alarm clock as well as graph paper for when I get an idea for another tiny house.

So adding a foot thick mattress to the 6’4″ bathroom height and 3 inches for the cement floor, 9 inches for the roof, 6 inches for the bathroom ceiling/bed support, you’ve got 8 feet 10 inches. Subtracting that from the overall height of 12 feet leaves 3 feet 2 inches height above the bed so you can sit up without a headache. For me, being 6 feet tall, I’m almost exactly 3 feet from my butt to the top of my head so this is perfect. Though the roof will have a little slope, the bed squishes down so it evens out.

Walking through the bathroom door into the actual living area you would see the kitchen counter. 2 feet above the counter would be 2 foot tall cabinets sticking a foot out from the wall except above the stove there would be a combination microwave/ convection oven. There would be a gap above these cabinets then more cabinets that stick 2 feet out from the wall so they could be accessed while sitting on the bed. The kitchen sink would be a “bar sink”one foot by one foot square and nine inches deep. This would only be for washing things that can’t go into the… dishwasher! Below the stove would be a “counter-top” dishwasher.

The fridge would be a 2 foot by 2 foot, 3 foot tall chest freezer with a drawer that has had it’s thermostat replaced so it operates at a slightly warmer temperature. To the right of the fridge and left of the sink would be a counter-top with nothing underneath so you could sit there and eat or use a laptop.

Since I am a rock climber, the three foot wide wall between the shower and kitchen would be a climbing wall to get up to the bed.

Other than the front door, the entire front of the house would be covered in vertical solar panels so they don’t get covered in snow and any snow that does blow onto them will be easy to clean off.

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Alex

Alex is a contributor and editor for TinyHouseTalk.com and the always free Tiny House Newsletter. He has a passion for exploring and sharing tiny homes (from yurts and RVs to tiny cabins and cottages) and inspiring simple living stories. We invite you to send in your story and tiny home photos too so we can re-share and inspire others towards a simple life too. Thank you!

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Amazing details and very well thought out! The only thing that concerned me was the sizes of openings and spaces. I am personally 2’ deep and a little more than that wide. This would make maneuvering around a bit challenging, certainly an incentive to lose weight at the very minimum. Great job!

I have no knowledge of cold climate living but the idea of entering into the bathroom is creative and perhaps a very good one at that. If you have a bed near the ceiling it may be called a loft and that can be figured in to a tiny shed type permit. Also if you need to meet codes there could be issues. One example is that very few people consider what it takes to extract a person in a medical emergency from a confined space. There are bathrooms in homes that really can cause long delays in removing a person. Imagine a sudden chest pain such that you can’t climb out of bed. You dial 911 and they have a long delay while they remove a wall to extract you.